Miranda Lambert doesn't start side businesses the way most people do - by figuring out what she's good at or sensing an unmet need.

"I don't even know what's in style," says the multiplatinum country singer about her latest project, a shoe brand named Miranda by Miranda Lambert she started in June in tandem with her fifth album, Platinum.

When Lambert was designing the line, her manufacturing partner told her that crystal-bedazzled boots - which are also platinum - might be too intense for the shoppers at DSW, a discount store that carries her collection. So she had a sample pair made in her size and has been wearing them onstage and in photographs for months. "I just decided we'd see what people start responding to," she said.

Her personal brand

In the decade since her first album made its debut at the top of Billboard's country charts, Lambert has had some practice getting people on board with her personal brand. She's also proved she can plop her personality - blonde, concealed-weapon-carrying, feisty, down-home fun - on virtually anything.

She runs two Pink Pistol retail stores, one where she lives in Tishomingo, Okla., and the other in the tiny town of Lindale, Texas, where she grew up. She named the boutique Pink Pistol in 2012 by combining her two favorite words.

In August she's opening a bed and breakfast in Oklahoma. Her Red 55 Winery will soon be distributing nationally, to complement her Miranda Lambert coffee. She's also signing a deal to put out a clothing line of affordable jeans and T-shirts next year, followed by a similar endeavor for dog accessories. "I've always said I want to build an empire," she said during a stop in Los Angeles to see a taping of NBC's "The Voice," on which her husband, country singer Blake Shelton, is a judge. "I don't think my empire will be in New York City in a high-rise. My empire is more of a backyard circus tent."

Most popular genre

Her timing is right: Country music is now America's most popular genre, outpacing classic rock for the first time last year, according to research firm NPD Group. Lambert, 30, and Shelton, 38, have risen to become the industry's most powerful couple.

Depending on your age, they're either the new Faith Hill and Tim McGraw or the new Johnny Cash and June Carter. Lambert earned $8.8 million in 2013, according to Billboard , placing her 36th among all musicians. Shelton took in $10.3 million.

She won't share revenue figures for her dozen or so non-music projects, but Lambert's on track to out-earn most country artists in record sales alone. Her new album sold 175,000 copies in its first week, topping the Billboard 200 and putting her in the same ballpark as other country-pop crossover artists such as Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. Those two stars still sell more albums, and Swift has a popular line of perfumes, but Lambert's the only one reaching their shared fan base with tank tops that say things such as "Southern Mess."

Many women buy the shirts to wear to Lambert's concerts, where the audience - about 75 percent of whom are female, mostly young, often in sundresses and boots - pump their fists as she strums a guitar and belts out songs of empowerment from behind a microphone stand made of an old shotgun. The showstopper at her performances is usually "Gunpowder & Lead," which is about an abusive relationship:

His fist is big but my gun's bigger

He'll find out when I pull the trigger.

When Lambert was 16, music agent Joey Lee heard her demo, then called to tell her to stop by if she were ever in Nashville. "A month later, the receptionist said, 'There's a girl out here to see you,' " Lee recalled. "She comes in all by herself and puts her boots on my desk, crosses her legs, and says, 'What do you want to talk about?' " After Sony said it wanted her to go with a different producer than the one she chose, Lambert, then 19, told the record company president that she was going to wait three years until her contract expired and make her album with another label if he didn't change his mind.

This nerve is apparently inherited. When her mom, Bev, was approached by a winery offering free bottles for one of her daughter's tours, she got an idea. "I didn't know jack about wine," she said. "But I said to my husband, 'Hey, babe, we're in a dry town. Let's see if we can get a license for a winery.' " They soon discovered that Gov. Rick Perry had passed a law allowing the Texas Department of Agriculture to classify wine as a souvenir, then started selling Crazy Ex Girlfriend sweet white muscat at their daughter's fan store.

Growing fame

Early on, she stayed away from endorsement deals, which can overwhelm a singer's persona. "We kept the brand clean," says Marion Kraft, her manager. After turning down contracts with an acne treatment and a soft drink, Lambert did her first commercial in 2007 for cotton. ("Endorsing cotton is like endorsing fresh air," Kraft said.)

Lambert recently had an idea for a new business, a hotel made up entirely of Airstream trailers. And a few days ago she told her husband, who started doing Pizza Hut commercials last spring, that Tishomingo needs a bait shop and that he should open it. He quickly replied: "I would never want to be as exhausted as you."